Fire rekindles debate over forest thinning

Sacramento Bee ^ | July 28, 2002 | Stuart Leavenworth

[farmfriend]

GIANT SEQUOIA NATIONAL MONUMENT -- Last week, the Packsaddle Grove looked like it was toast. A wind-blown wildfire, fed by underbrush, was raging toward the sequoia grove in the southern Sierra, shooting flames 200 feet high.

Then the fire hit a patch of trees the U.S. Forest Service had recently thinned and "treated" with a controlled burn. The fire was quickly downsized. Instead of jumping into the treetops, the blaze crept along the ground, where fire crews could easily snuff it out.

[farmfriend]

"A lot of these projects are nothing more than commercial timber sales, veiled in the language of fire protection," said Bird, who is based in Santa Fe, N.M.

Ooooo, can't have those commercial sales. No way. Someone might make a profit.

[farmfriend]

Pinging the usual suspects.

[farmfriend]

Pinging the new Chapter list.

[Free the USA]

bttt

[jdontom]

Bryan Bird, a forest activist who sits on the boards of both groups, makes no apology for tracking and trying to block many thinning projects in the West.

This waco is an idiot, living in New Mexico and stopping fire protection in California. You thank you have heard it all until these guys fes up to what they are actually doing.

[joyce11111]

I hope that some of our Western politicians will see the validity of thinning, and, block the envioro whackos. Let the loggers back into the woods. The forest is a renewable resource.

[snopercod]

With the horrible results of "environmentalism" billowing out of our forests in a cloud of smoke shaped like a skeleton, there is no longer any excuse for a moral person to embrace the preservation ethic.

The horrible truth is that "environmentalists" (in the popular meaning of the word), want to destroy forests, animals, and most of all: people.

IOW, they are motivated by death.

[hedgetrimmer]

"There is no other federal forest issue that results in more public spending, more damage to forests, or more hardship for people,"

Congressman Scott McInnis (R-CO) on the importance of wildfire management.

Forest Fires in the US
Compiled by Milagros Alvarez

• Table of Contents

The Forest Service has stated that nearly 73 million acres of national forests (61 million in the West and 12 million in the East) are at high to moderate risk of catastrophic fire. Cost estimates of treating this problem are in the tens of billions of dollars. This acreage does not necessarily account for lands off national forests that also have significant problems. Congress and the Appropriations committee recognized the need for a long-term commitment to the fire problems we face.

Last summer's wildfires demonstrated that we are not adequately prepared to deal with wildfire. The National Fire Plan is an excellent first step in becoming better prepared, and now we must sustain funding for its implementation. It took us nearly 100 years to get into this situation; it is going to take more than one year to get out of it; we need a long-term commitment to truly address this management problem. Investments made today in reducing the risks of wildland fire will eventually reduce the need for large emergency appropriations.

PDF version of Evaluating the Effectiveness of Postfire Rehabilitation Treatments Report

For this plan to be successful we must make long-term commitments to funding, remove barriers that prevent success, use all the management tools available, treat fire as a land management problem, involve local decision-making, and strengthen our research efforts. Too often we have searched for short-term solutions. While the challenges may seem huge, there is no doubt that failure will result in major damage to communities, our nation's forests, and our wallets. During the last decade, spending on postfire emergency watershed rehabilitation has increased to over $48 million (Evaluating the Effectiveness of Postfire Rehabilitation Treatments).

Click here for the free Adobe Acrobat Reader

Last summers' fires raged in part because policy gridlock has prevented forest managers from doing what it takes to address the conditions that lead to catastrophic wildfires. A forest manager can take steps to alleviate these conditions by removing combustible material and mechanically removing dead and dying trees from at-risk forests, particularly in the wildland-urban interface, and sensibly reintroducing fire to a landscape that has been starved of it for years.

Fire exclusion has directly contributed to fuel buildup. In addition many forests are currently beyond the natural range of tree stocking, and endemic and exotic pests have reached epidemic proportions. This combination of excessive basal area and increased pests results in fuel loads considerably above what historically occurred. The greatest problems we are facing in regard to wildland fire are high forest density developed from nearly a century of fire protection, lack of active management that can encourage fire adapted species, and the introduction of exotic species. In the FY 2001 appropriations bill Congress provided $401 million for fuel reduction projects in the wildland-urban interface. The Forest Service plans to conduct fuel reduction projects on 1.8 million acres using $205.6 million.

In addition to the development of heavy fuel loads, the jobs of contemporary firefighters have been complicated by the growth of the wildland-urban interface. Developed properties, frequently people's homes, stand in the way of today's wildfires. From last year's fires in Montana, where homes and other property were destroyed in the Bitterroot Valley, to the 1999 Fire Siege in Florida, where firefighters spent a great deal of time "steering" fires around development, the interface complicates firefighting and increases the values that are at stake.

Our Nation's forests cover one-third of the land area of the country and are unequalled in their value to people and our economy. They are far too valuable not to be managed utilizing the best science and experience possible. Forest resource management decisions that we make today will be reflected in the forests of the 22nd century and beyond. We must do it right today if we are to maintain the integrity and productivity of these forests in perpetuity.

---

Table of Contents

• National Fire Plan

• Current Law

• Ten Year Comprehensive Strategy

• National Fire Plan Implementation

• Testimony

• Related Links

Last updated July 5th, 2001

Society of American Foresters 5400 Grosvenor Lane Bethesda, Maryland 20814	Phone: 301·897·8720 Fax: 301·897·3690 Email: safweb@safnet.org

[r9etb]

"A lot of these projects are nothing more than commercial timber sales, veiled in the language of fire protection," said Bird, who is based in Santa Fe, N.M.

The boy has apparently never set foot in some of the Northwest forests -- some of which have been heavily logged for decades, and are still healthy.

If he wants a good place to check it out, he should go to the Deschutes National Forest in Oregon, specifically the Black Butte area, and take a gander at how well the old-time forest management practices worked to protect the forests. (I tend to agree with the enviros that the more recent tendency to clear-cut is bad for the forests. But as the history of the Deschutes forest shows, one can profitably log without clear-cutting.

[B-bone]

Where have your guys been? Haven't you heard?

Thinning only works in South Dakota!

[supercat]

Ooooo, can't have those commercial sales. No way. Someone might make a profit.

Logging--even salvage logging--is evil not because it destroys trees (salvage logging often doesn't), but because people profit by it.

[r9etb]

IOW, they are motivated by death.

I disagree. I think they are positively horrified by the prospect of death, and think that nothing should ever die. That's why so many of them are vegetarians. I'd bet not a one of them has seen a dead body (then again, neither have I....). They don't want to kill animals for food, and they don't want to kill trees for wood. War and the military are always uncalled-for. Gun control is a given, because guns are for killing.

Theirs is a happy, fuzzy-warm world of the sort seen in small childrens' books.

The fact that it doesn't correspond to the realities of life on Earth makes no difference to them -- the world ought to be death-free, and they'll do all in their power to make everybody pretend it can be so.

The dirty secret is that they're basically children playing at big-people games -- and as often happens when children use adult equipment, things and people get broken and killed. But of course, like all children, when it happens they'll claim it wasn't their fault.

[Free the USA]

Index Bump

[hedgetrimmer]

And how does this forest activist earn his living? I will wager this fellow lives off government grants to some environmental group, paid for by taxing people who are taxed on their profits. You'd think he'd want to keep the gravy train rolling.

[CedarDave]

This was in the Sacramento Bee?? Boy, how must the long, hot summer and fire season scare those folks living amongst the pines in the foothills of the Sierras. A few more fires like those in AZ, CO and OR these past 90 days, and even more folks will come to view the enviro-nazis for what they are: Anti-people except for those in their small elitist groups.

[supercat]

The dirty secret is that they're basically children playing at big-people games -- and as often happens when children use adult equipment, things and people get broken and killed. But of course, like all children, when it happens they'll claim it wasn't their fault.

You are describing the Useful Idiots. The liberal leaders know precisely what they are doing.

[crz]

Tell me..how does one select or single tree harvest in such hilly areas? Have you ever cut on a mountianside? If so, who did you fall timber for? Did you fall the trees upwards on the hill or down, or did you fall them sideways?
Clearfell or clearcuts are one of the most IMPORTANT TIMBER MANAGEMENT TOOLS available to the foresters. It is a tool that is used to spot out unhealthy stands to be replanted with better yeilding and healthier timber types. Does Aspen require clearfell as do other shade intolerant trees? Since when do we have umpteen thousand experts on timber and forest health when not one of these geeks has ever held a saw in their hands or hooked a chokker or ran a log loader.

[CedarDave]

Bryan Bird, a forest activist who sits on the boards of both groups, makes no apology for tracking and trying to block many thinning projects in the West.

Yeah, he doesn't need wood products; he's likely living in an adobe mud house/hut in SF. But I'll bet he has a wood stove and burns wood for heat. Having lived there in the past, it's a badge of honor not to use "modern" fossil fuels (like clean-burning natural gas, or electric heating). Of course the wood burning smoke contributes to more air pollution than any other type, and is why they have "no-burn" nights in Albuquerque, and probably soon in Santa Fe.

[CedarDave]

Theirs is a happy, fuzzy-warm world of the sort seen in small childrens' books.

Good, right-on-the-mark comment. Many of those that live in SF do so on their daddy's wealth or on money that someone else made that they inherited. They don't have a clue about jobs or reality. Or if they do, they don't care because their narrow political ideology is more important to them than the well-being of other, working people.

[snopercod]

You misunderstoodmy meaning.

They are motivated by your death, not theirs.